MartinLogan's Big, Beautiful Neolith Debuts in Delaware

MartinLogan's Neolith is a 75-inch tall, 385-pound superspeaker that will run for $80,000 a pair when it arrives at retail in early 2015. The Neolith, in development for three years, made its North American debut Friday, Nov. 7 at a special press event at Overture Ultimate Home Electronics in Wilmington, Del.

A public event for Overture customers was scheduled for the following day, as part of the first stop on the latest leg of what it calls its Truth in Sound Tour. This followed the speaker's worldwide introduction at the Munich High End Show in May.

Described by MartinLogan product manager Devin Zell as a "fresh new look at our high end speaker" and the company's most ambitious product in at least a decade, the three-year engineering and design process was a product, Zell said, of "challenging our engineering team to see how far they could go with the technology."

Where they went is a truly amazing speaker, with a huge, bold sound, that very clearly wowed the small group of hardcore audiophiles in attendance.

Overture Ultimate Home Electronics founder and president Terry Menacker, during the presentation, served as both host and raconteur, playing a variety of classic pop, jazz and even opera tracks on the Neolith- and following just about all of them with personal recollections of having gone to see Miles Davis or Duke Ellington or even the performer of that particular version of "Requiem" in person. The audiophile journalists in attendance also shared their encyclopedic knowledge of the music; at one point, Menacker mentioned a particular decades-old jazz record and those present were able to recite the names of all of the musicians who played on it.

Menacker was also quick to note, however, that the speakers had not yet been fully broken in at the time of the weekend events.